Five On Cloud Nine
by Day of Diana
Summary: Sakura wants to find Sasuke. Sasuke wants Sakura to find him too. Set during Sasuke Retrieval Arc. Multiple Sakura pairings. Sakura Centric. Cracky and Sakura-haremish.
1. Chapter 1: New Evidence

_Bienvenue. Just a few things before I begin: _

_1. This is an alternate version of the story "Birthday Tea" and was originally going to be a collaboration between Sissy and me, but that never worked out and so here I am, doing it on my own. _

_2. All of the pairings revolve around Sakura. It's not exactly a harem-ish thing, it's more sophisticated than that (I'd like to think) but that's the general idea. _

_3. Why yes, there will be JuuSaku, SuiSaku, SakuKa (KarinxSakura), SasuSaku, KakaSaku, NaruSaku, SaiSaku, and YamaSaku. Don't like it? Review and tell me your favorite pairing with Sakura and I'll try to include fluffles for it. _

_5. This is going to be a chapter story, I think. I'll try to update it every week, but that'll be hard if I don't receive any motivation. Hint, hint. _

_6. Did you notice there is no #4? Luls. Anyway, on with the story!_

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Sakura was sure she had never been in such an uncomfortable position in her life, and was also sure she never wanted to mold her body into this awkward "monkey-hanging-from-a-tree" form again. Even if it was at a split-second notice, Sakura thought her body, conditioned from years of training to respond to the tiniest snap of a twig with extreme alarm and arrange itself into a defensive stance immediately, could come up with a more agreeable shape in which she could hang around for hours without feeling the need to shift and move around to relieve the aching of her back, neck and shoulders. And her legs, too, which were getting superbly sore, and which she would have to stretch and stretch (that would be so _agonizing_) later, while Naruto, Kakashi-sensei and Sai stood over her and reprimanded her about separating from their small group.

There was a tiny movement below her and Sakura's eyes snapped toward it, telling herself she was not in the least bit terrified by the relaxing pale, pale, _pale_ human (was he human? he was so so pale, like Sai, but even Sai's skin wasn't so cleanly, desperately, blindingly _white_) lying in the grass 7 feet under her current hiding place.

In her unwelcome surprise of finding another creature breathing within approximately the same 7 feet as her, in this uninhabited forest, (he chose here! of all places! the glen was 300 square miles wide for Hokage's sake!) her hands and legs had gripped the nearest secure hold they could find (a very convenient tree), and here she was, hanging, like a playful monkey, upside down, head craning to the side, trying to watch the man's actions.

After she had gotten away from the trio of men who always seemed to accompany her on her missions everywhere, Sakura had gone off a little ways to explore a good ten square miles of the forest. It wasn't that she was bored by Naruto, Kakashi and Sai, it was just... they had been searching the exact same scenery for 50 square miles for a week, and they hadn't found any traces at all of where Sasuke and his team might be. That sneaky little bastard had them running all around Fire Country (and some other countries too) every other month. There were always little reports, semi-positive sightings of the guy and his band of 'half-crazy shits', as Naruto liked to call them, but the truth was always disheartening: The reports were all wholly false or merely mistaken. There was one citizen who swore she had been grabbed from behind by this freaking huge man with wild orange hair and almost gored to death when "a vision of beautiful pale skin and bluish raven locks" swept her off her feet and jumped five stories to deposit her on an abandoned building, then lept away to battle the demon. She was given medication shortly afterward.

Nevertheless, Team Kakashi, with the sometimes present Yamato, was always sent out to investigate the accounted sightings of Sasuke. Sakura was tired of it all: the excitement that built up in her every time they went out to search the place where Sasuke was allegedly seen, the rush of near love for the boy who she had once admired so much, the journey to the site, the laughs and jokes along the way. Then the crushing disappointment and her painful heartache when they found he never was there, never had been there... the report was wrong, a _lie_. Most of all, Sakura hated that she came to loathe these missions... no matter if she spent most of the time talking with Naruto, Sai and Kakashi, becoming closer to them. It was what she could not find... what she still longed to find. Sometimes she could not bear it, and at night did slip out of her tent to double and triple check the areas they had already examined, hoping, in the wee hours of the morning, she would discover some miniscule clue her team had not found the afternoon before. Then, in her daydream, she would return to the camp triumphant, and her comrades would be filled with fresh hope, fresh strength, and set out anew, knowing that on this day, this pure glittering day, they would find Sasuke and they would return him to the village.

But no such thing had ever happened as of yet. Either Sasuke was the shit at covering his tracks, or he hadn't really been where the reports said he most certainly had been.

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Sakura clung with mounting fear to the thick tree branch as the pale shape under her hiding place yawned and turned over onto his side. Sakura mentally exhaled a nervous sigh. Still napping. As he had been for the past four hours. She was getting extremely tired of hanging like this, and wondered if her team mates were worried about her. She allowed herself to invent a scene which partly satisfied her pondering and boredom: Naruto, Kakashi and Sai screaming and running around in circles with their hands up in the air and their clothes and hair in disarray, trying to find a decent place to have a sparring session while Sakura took her sweet time enjoying the forest and the many hidey holes it had to offer.

With a distasteful (but quiet, oh, yes, very quiet) snort, Sakura pulled her head out of her daydream. She cracked one eye open to look at the slumbering (PALE, get out in the SUN sometime, geez!) body below her. He was still there, his arms folded over each other, his head turned to the side, his chest rising and falling in a deep, even sleep. His shirt had been taken off sometime in the first twenty minutes she had been frozen to the tree. She supposed it was because the shade had been too hot for him. His rippling torso and arm muscles drew Sakura's attention every time the guy breathed. She thought he was either a ninja, or had a very hard to please wife.

Staring at people for too long made Sakura fidgety. Her body was getting quite restless, and there was this one spot on her nose she really had to scratch. It was driving her nuts. She sneaked a glance at the man again, only moving her eyes. Sleeping quietly. She supposed it wouldn't hurt to, very carefully, very quickly, rub her nose hard into her armpit, in an attempt to stop the irritating itchiness by preoccupying her nose with a horrible body odor.

About a split second after she had done this, (and she wished she hadn't, because the smell and the itching were a terrible combination to behold) there was a rustling in the leaves above her. Above her! She hadn't noticed anything hovering in the dark roof of green black leaves above her!

Sakura braced her body, and, tensing, released her hold on the tree the moment a black, black hand shot out over the place she was and snatched wildly at the air, but Sakura was already leaping onto the next tree a hundred yards away, using her conserved chakra from the past five hours to aid her in an adrenaline fueled getaway.

She ended up returning, (after about ten minutes of panicking and bounding from tree to tree as fast as she could) to the campsite, where the team had slept for the past week and would leave next morning for the Leaf Village, again coming back empty-handed. She supposed her body's natural compass had tried to find the safest possible place for her after that frightening encounter with a bodiless hand and a pale freak of a man. Luckily, she didn't seem to have been followed.

"Hello? Anyone here?" Sakura called, in a soft, slightly shaky voice.

There was no answer.

Sakura sighed and straightened up. The others must be out doing something... looking for her, finding fish for dinner, dressing up as prim little old ladies to chat about their nephews... anything, really. She could stay here or walk around trying to find them. Sakura chose the former. It was safer, and the forest was getting a bit dark. She could see that it was about 7 o'clock by the sun's position, which meant there would be no light for her in a couple of minutes unless she lit a fire. Besides, the others would be back soon, and they would probably be hungry, and need the food she would cook so that they could nag her about goofing off when they were trying to hunt for the smallest signs of Sasuke.

The pit they had dug in the center of the camp at the start of the week was filled with charred sticks, ashes, and fluffy bits of burned cotton. The ashes were a foot deep in parts of the pit, and the gray dust was also scattered in a wide ring around the campsite. Since the area they had decided to search was only 60 square miles wide, the campsite had been in the same place all week. The summer nights in the Snow Country are known to get as cold as -5 degrees, but they had been lucky all week: the coldest night had only been 30 degrees. Because of the cold, the fire pit was built deep and had a wide circumference for the heat to reach all of the tents, and was kept alight all night.

To Sakura, it seemed as though it was colder than 30 degrees tonight, and, with one check to her thermometer, she confirmed her suspicions. 10 degrees. This was just _great_.

"Ah, fuck you, Snow Country. You think you can beat me down with your weather because I'm used to a much warmer climate?" Sakura made an obscene hand gesture towards the violet sky, with the sinking sun's last rays of light glimmering over the tops of the tall trees. "You can't knock me down!"

The weather chose to respond to Sakura's challenge by sending a very violent gust of chilly wind to whip at Sakura's exposed arms and face. She almost stumbled into the ashy remains of last night's fire.

"Aha! You see! I won't take any of that shit from you! Take this, you mother-fucker!" Sakura grabbed a kunai from the pouch on her waist and screamed, "En garde!" before launching into a duel with an invisible foe with sloppy jabbing of her weapon and overly dramatic dodges. She also amused herself with commentary she provided in a deep voice.

"And the pink haired kunoichi is taking on the big one today! Snow Country's own cold as ice, the mother freaker of the decade: The Weather! Oh, nice swing, Sakura!"

She ooohed and awwed as the crowd in her own voice as she pretended to fiercely stab her opponent it its side.

However, she was forced to stop not five minutes later when a loud burst of laughter rang in her ears, no doubt coming from the mother freaker of the century: Naruto.

She spun around and her other team mates were, astoundingly, sitting on a log next to her tent with a huge trout lying fish-eyed and open-mouthed on all three of their laps. Naruto, sitting on the far right of the log, was laughing and cheering her on. Sai and Kakashi, however, were not looking at her, but were apparently totally engrossed in examining the trout's belly and tail sections.

"Aw, Sakura, don't stop; It was just getting to the good part!" yelled Naruto, grinning winningly as he glanced at the other two men to confirm his statement.

Two seconds later, Naruto was unconscious.

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"Seriously, though, your acting was pretty funny; I mean, I know you can hit like a guy, but you can actually sound like one too! It's pretty good!" Naruto was fanning the flames of the fire; the stupid wind was having a good old time trying to blow it out.

"Do you want another smack, then, because I'm so good at it?" Sakura flexed her fists and arms threateningly in Naruto's direction.

"Oh, uh, no! I already, uh... so Kakashi-sensei!" Naruto hurriedly changed the subject, while quickly running back to his dinner. "Tell Sakura-chan what we found!"

Sakura swallowed the rice in her throat. Had they found something, finally, that could help them trace Sasuke...?

Kakashi looked up from his book, already done with his meal. He still wasn't comfortable with taking off his mask in front of them, and had eaten his dinner inside of his tent in about ten seconds, lest the others see him. Sakura was pretty sure the day would come, though. The group was so comfortable with each other now. Over the years, Sakura, Naruto, and in even less time, Sai and Yamato, had learned that trying to trick Kakashi out of his mask would never work, despite the many "subtle" conversations and actions taken towards removing it from Kakashi's face.

Kakashi turned to Sakura, and must have seen the hope lighting up her face, because she saw the corners of his mouth through his mask lift slightly. Then he said, "We have found some strands of black, orange, white and red hair in a bird's nest about five miles east of our campsite. Sasuke must not have thought to check if those animals had absconded with evidence. The nest was near a river, anyway, so he and his group might have just been getting fresh water, bathing or washing clothes, anything like that, before continuing on."

Sakura was about to speak when Sai pre-interrupted her. "Of course, we need to check the samples before confirming it's really him. Unfortunately, we did not think to bring a DNA testing kit with us."

Naruto stared at him, and Sakura did too before facing Kakashi again. "Do you know when the nest was made? Were the hairs embedded in the nest, or resting in it? Can you guess which way Sasuke-ku- he might have gone from there?" She saw Naruto glance at her out of the corner of her eye.

Kakashi leaned against the tree behind him, his right hand rubbing his face in a tired way. "It is difficult to say when the nest was made. I'm not an expert on those things, so as soon as it's morning we will start heading back to the Leaf village to check the hairs and get some experts to head down here. But to answer your question, Sakura, the hairs were made as part of the nest, so it's a pretty safe bet the nest was being made at the time that Sasuke and his group was passing through."

Sakura made a small noise and opened her mouth, but Kakashi continued, lifting a hand for silence. "As to where the group was heading next, we found very faded footprints in a small part of the dried bank of the river, but they were going in random directions. Presumably, Sasuke and his group were walking in the shallow water of the river without any notion that in the future they would be confusing trackers such as ourselves. The water must have dried up later, because Sasuke did not cover those tracks. We examined up and down the west and east sides of the river, but found no more prints of any kind."

Kakashi rubbed his temples with his fingertips, indicating to Sakura that he might have a headache from Sasuke's incredible stealthiness.

"But... at least we have a direction now... we know where we're going again." Sakura sat up a little straighter. "This is good, isn't it?"

Kakashi looked at her with one bleary eye. Naruto was staring into the depths of the molten gold fire; a good way to blind himself, Sakura thought. Sai started speaking again. He was, Sakura knew, quite adept at putting dampers on hopeful situations, though she was sure he didn't mean to... most of the time.

"The thing is, we don't know where we should go for sure until we get experts here and have them check everything. Even then, or by that time, we might have gotten here too late and all of the other evidence will be gone. And we will be back at square one."

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_So... love it? Hate it? Review and let me know if I should continue it! Also, sorry it's so short. Sissy deleted half of it purposefully._


	2. Chapter 2: We Move On To Find

_Disclaimer: Why, no, I don't own _**Naruto**_ or any of its sexy characters. Why do you ask? _

_Part Two, my peeps. Let's see how it goes..._

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That night was a cold one, the iciest yet since they had come to Snow Country one week ago. What could Sasuke be doing in Snow Country, anyway? Looking for Itachi, his maniacal brother? An Akatsuki hideout? One of Orochimaru's hidey holes? There were numerous questions, suggestions, plausible answers. But the most recent sighting of Itachi had been in Mist Territory, not here, in this land of freezing tundras, snow-capped mountains and white walls of slowly moving glaciers. The Akatsuki had never been known to reside here, nor had Orochimaru ever been spotted popping out from behind a concealed passageway, accidentally surprising an unlucky penguin. It was way too cold in the summer and winter to live here, or so Sakura had thought, every time Team Kakashi had passed a sad town of igloos on their way to the boreal forest in which Sasuke had supposedly rested awhile.

Sakura hated waking up in the middle of the night to pee. Especially on a frigid night such as this one. She didn't even remember drinking that much water, as the unfortunate trout they had had for dinner had been flaky and juicy but bland without any of her usual favorite herbs to flavor it.

She stepped over the snoring lump of Naruto-when had he crawled in her tent?-and fumbled with her shoes and cloak before cursing at the tent flaps, which her cold hands could not untie. Finally picking apart the knot in the rope with freezing fingers, Sakura stepped out of her cozy shelter... and into three inches of snow. It was snowing. In the summer. She would have laughed out loud if she had not been so damn cold and cheerful little drops of snow had not been sliding down the back of her cloak and pajamas.

So this is what it is like to live in a frozen over hell, Sakura thought, as she sleepily made her way to a clump of bushes covered in an icy white glitter. She squatted down behind them and did her business like a good little girl. She supposed this is how the weather of Snow Country retaliated when a person pretended to kick its ass in the early evening in an entirely fair match. Very immature. Sakura thought about wagging her finger at the drifts of snow in disapproval, but dismissed the idea because the weather might get even angrier and rain hailstones down on her head.

When Sakura was done she covered the place up with snow, hoping the guys wouldn't find it in the morning and none of it had frozen itself to her. She pricked her finger on the bushes as she made her way back to her tent (the snow just had to be covering up the thorns, right? Damn snow) but was too tired to heal herself. It was only a little blood, anyway. No big deal.

She wandered blurry-eyed back into her tent, cuddled up next to Naruto (she needed the body warmth, dammit. Who was going to give a hoot in the morning?) and fell back asleep with her shoes still on and snow melting sullenly on her cloak.

She was prodded awake some minutes later, and, annoyed, rolled herself over so as not to feel the effects of the poking. But the poking persisted, and eventually she was so fed up with Naruto's incessant jabbing in her back that, in a stunning, half as quick a turn as she would have done if she were awake, pushed Naruto onto his back and sat on top of him, resting her weight on his hips. She pinned his arms above his head, leaned down very quickly so that he would have no time to react, and said without opening her eyes, in a deathly quiet and malevolent voice, "I swear to the gods if you don't stop poking me right now I will run you through with my fists."

She flopped off of him, tired after that exercise, and snuggled once more into the blankets.

A few minutes later, one more hesitant poke touched her spine, and she flipped over onto her other side, and said, with a deep crease in her brow, her eyes still heavy and not open at all because she was going right back to sleep after this, "Do you want to _die_, Naruto?"

There was a strangled, choking noise as Sakura swiftly punched the boy in the stomach with all of her sleepy might. When she heard his voice though, she thought about apologizing.

"I'm not Naruto, you ugly bitch, I'm Sai."

She did not regret her actions at all. But what in the world was Sai doing here? Naruto had been there a minute ago, she was sure of it.

"What the hell are you doing in my tent, Sai?"

"_Your_ tent? No, no, what are you doing in _my _tent, ugly? And you're dripping all over the place. Get out of here, now."

Despite herself, Sakura almost giggled. Out of sheer lunacy or the realization that she had indeed gone back to bed with her cloak and shoes still on, she did let a small laugh escape.

"What the hell are you-?"

"Sai, shut up. Go back to sleep. It's allright, I promise you, it's allright."

Either Sai did not say anything else that night, or Sakura just did not hear him, because she spent the next few hours in dreamland.

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Over the next few weeks, experts checked out the site where Sasuke had last been seen. Team Kakashi, assigned on other missions, tried to get the newest information they could from Shizune, Tsunade, or anyone else in the project daily. The news was good news.

First, the experts were able to determine when the nest had been completed, about two days before Team Kakashi had arrived to check the report out. The type of nest built usually took around five days to finish, and more hairs had been found in the top parts of the nest, which meant Sasuke and his group had missed Team Kakashi by a maximum of three days. The DNA tests of the hair confirmed the black strands were Sasuke's, and some of the faint boot prints in the river bank were Sasuke's as well. Even further examination of the grounds uncovered a tiny piece of cloth, and DNA testing revealed that blood plasma had soaked the piece. However, the blood plasma was not Sasuke's. Even with the DNA samples of hair and now this highly valuable piece of blood plasma, the Leaf Village's leading forensic specialists did not know who the others in Sasuke's group were, but did know he was traveling with two men who were around his age and one woman who was also near his age. They thought the others in his group were people he had worked with from his time at Orochimaru's side and was comfortable with them and had need for their abilities to help him. They most likely did not have public criminal records and were exceptional shinobi.

One rainy afternoon in mid-September, half a week after the investigation had concluded in the Snow Country, but two months after Team Kakashi had discovered the site, Tsunade called the team members in for a mission back to the land of ice and snow.

"There is evidence suggesting that Sasuke will come back to the forest in the winter months." Tsunade said, her steepled fingers pressed against the tip of her nose.

Sakura and Naruto let out small gasps of surprise at this. Sai, Kakashi and Yamato looked on silently.

"But Lady Tsunade," Sakura began, "It is so-" She stopped herself at Tsunade's quick glance in her direction.

"I know it seems unlikely, but the experts assigned to the case, such as myself, have uncovered small signs that I do not believe you were looking for the last time you were there." Sakura noticed Tsunade's eyes slide slowly over Sai and settle on Kakashi. "Maybe you just missed them... but please be more alert in the future. This may be the only chance we have in a while to capture him and his comrades. If you fail, we might not be able to give you a second chance. The council of elders is skeptical with this plan as it is. Only because of the overwhelming proof that Sasuke will return to the forest somewhere between October and February, and the fact that the Sharingan is a precious bloodline to the village is the only reason they've approved it at all.

"You are to leave in three days. Pack everything appropriate for the journey. Lots of dried food, long and heavy clothing, extra blankets, you get the idea. There will not be a lot of towns to go shopping in, so the council is only giving you a limited spending amount. Every month, new packages of dried food and water containers will be dropped off at the largest town closest to where we think Sasuke will be arriving. At a population of 200, it's not great, but it does have a post office and clothing shops and a grocery store and necessity stores, plus a civilian police station and a small civilian medical clinic. It will be 30 miles from where you're to be setting up camp, though, and you know you have to remain somewhat undercover, so go there only once a month to pick up food, replace broken necessities, that sort of thing.

"Once you capture Sasuke and his team, you need to bind them up properly and bring them straight back to the Leaf Village. If they escape, it will be on your heads. The council wanted me to tell you that you'll be on probation if you mess up. I probably won't do anything so harsh, but there will be some form of punishment if you fail. The Leaf Village is counting on you five to bring this bastard back alive."

"Lady Tsunade," Sakura ventured tentatively. "What reason is there that Sasuke would return to that... pardon me... desolate forest?"

Tsunade surveyed her pupil with a firm line in her mouth and no softness in her eyes. Shizune looked from the 5th to the pinkette with an anxious expression, clutching Ton Ton, Tsunade's pig, in her arms.

"I thought your group was putting in all the effort you could to see those assignments finished completely," Tsunade was now sweeping the whole group with her hardened honey-brown orbs. "Even if similar missions in the past had left you all frustrated, I expected you to approach each one with the same mindset: Let's find Sasuke, and bring him back to the Leaf Village. No matter how defeated you felt when you came back with diddly squat, you should never have started treating these missions as though they would ultimately amount to nothing!"

Tsunade was now up from her chair with her palms pressed flat against her desk, looking at all of them with extreme ire. Sakura stared at the 5th. She rarely saw her master so worked up.

"I am ashamed of all of you. Kakashi, you led the past mission into the Snow Country. What were you thinking? When exactly did you decide to give up? All those other missions, did you just sit around reading that damned book? Should I have checked your enthusiasm and made sure you were doing your job properly? And what about you, Yamato? Sai? Sakura? Even _Naruto_? God dammit, you're all ninja of the Village Hidden in the Leaves! We're the best Hidden Village there is in the entire world! And now I have to explain to the other Kage at the Summit that we probably could have caught Sasuke a lot earlier if our ninja had not been slacking off!"

Sakura was very confused. They had been doing their jobs. Each one of them had run themselves ragged trying to complete all of their missions, including the special retrieval of Sasuke missions. But Tsunade was telling them exactly the opposite of what Sakura thought was true. What was going on? Sakura turned her head slightly to catch Yamato's or Kakashi's eye, but was shocked when she saw her leaders bowing their heads in shame. Sai was doing the same. Naruto, always the black sheep, was still upright and blank-faced, but Sakura could tell he was restraining himself from scowling or shouting in anger. His fists were trembling a little by his sides.

Tsunade was now pacing behind her desk, arms folded under her chest with a look of forced calm on her face. Shizune, wisely, scuttled from the room mumbling something about 'a strong bottle of sake' with Ton Ton still squeezed in her arms. Suddenly, Tsunade turned and directed Kakashi to speak about his part in this little mishap. He looked like an incredibly old man as he explained that somewhere around the fourteenth missive, he had started to think that the Leaf would never get Sasuke back.

"He is superb at hiding his tracks, as are his comrades. It is virtually impossible to trace him, even with my nin dogs. As I've mentioned in previous reports after these missions, I think someone who is extremely skilled at espionage or undercover work is with him, or at least helping him."

Tsunade's eyebrows rose and then furrowed. "I see. So you're saying it's very troublesome to track him because he's done such a good job at covering his messes up, and you just don't think it's worth it to follow him around with such little and not so obvious clues?"

Kakashi, who had been speaking to the ground for his accounting, now raised his head and looked straight into Tsunade's eyes. "No. I knew Sasuke would never intentionally leave evidence behind, but with him constantly making sure he is not being followed, leading three other people and wiping his trail, he was bound to mess up somewhere, and he did. It was just... a smaller mistake than I looked for, and I am deeply embarrassed that I did not catch it."

He couldn't have really felt that way, Sakura thought, watching her sensei with some amazement. Otherwise, he wouldn't have been able to state the case so boldly or even dare to look into Tsunade's smoldering glare.

"And what do you think you did not 'catch', hm?" the 5th asked, her furious gaze piercing the gray depths of Kakashi's eyes. Sakura saw him blink, and he was silent for a minute before replying.

"A big clue... I'm guessing prints, a fire pit... blood..." It hit Sakura at that moment that her sensei was grasping at straws. She could not believe this. Every assignment to look for Sasuke... had Kakashi just been fooling the younger members of his team the entire time into thinking they've tried everything they could to search for the hot-headed Uchiha? What the... should Sakura be worried that she hadn't been able to detect Kakashi's unwillingness to exhaust his extensive repertoire in order to locate the boy who he had once devoted so much time and care to? It hadn't occurred to her once that he did not want to, or did not want to continue, to hunt for his long-lost student. When had this man, who she trusted with her life, given up hope? Or did he not have any faith from the beginning?

Tsunade was shaking her head while Kakashi listed other possible generic evidence that Sasuke might have left behind. She was sneering by the time he proclaimed he was finished.

"I should have you placed on a leave of absence, Kakashi." Sakura had never heard such animosity in Tsunade's tone. She had always thought the Hokage and her sensei had gotten on rather well. Sakura peeped at Kakashi's face, which, because it was covered by his mask, she could not immediately tell the emotion of. However, his one eye was staring straight ahead, not even looking at Tsunade. Because of Sakura's angle to him, she could not make out his body language or his mood. Later she would ask Yamato what kind of feeling was radiating from him at the moment.

The team remained quiet as their superior continued. "You did name the evidence that has convinced me to send you back there... but I don't think you knew you said it." Tsunade heaved a sigh and sat down at her desk, evidently trying to compose herself. Sakura wondered how often in the past couple of years Tsunade had gotten worked up into such a frenzy, and then reminded herself that her master drank the strongest alcohol available.

"There was a grave," Tsunade began, causing Yamato's and Sai's heads to jerk up and Sakura to suck in a tiny breath. She had not been expecting that. Shouldn't they have at least found _that_, even if they apparently hadn't been trying too hard?

Tsunade closed her eyes and went on, ignoring all of their reactions, even Naruto's colorful mutter of surprise. "It was carefully hidden with a working six-month genjutsu, one of Sasuke's own inventions, very ingenious. We had a hard time breaking it but did manage to seal the remaining pieces of the genjutsu in scroll to study for later. We found a deep grave with the bones of a 15 year old male inside of it. The bones are quite strange, and our labs are still testing small fragments of them. There was also a head stone near the grave with the inscription..." Tsunade riffled through some of the papers on her desk and retrieved a yellowed folder. " 'Kaguya Kimimaro: Inmate, Friend, Brother'. You've fought him, Naruto. We know he was one of Orochimaru's people who tried to capture Sasuke a couple years ago. He was killed at the hands of Gaara and he was supposed to be in an un-marked grave inside of the Hidden Leaf." Tsunade paused and flipped a page of the folder, narrowing her eyes. "We've recently discovered that the bones in Kaguya's grave in the Leaf were replaced around three years ago with an unknown male skeleton." She closed the folder and stared at them all, as if one of them might admit to the deed.

Yamato cleared his throat and spoke in that odd, smooth tone of his. "So you think that Sasuke will come back to visit this... grave?"

Tsunade flicked her eyes over to him and answered in just as cool a voice, "He's probably doing this for one of the members in his group. I personally do not think Sasuke has such nostalgic tendencies. This just shows how much he needs to please his team in order to get them to obey him."

Naruto scoffed audibly and Tsunade raised her eyebrows at him, inviting his opinion. He shook his head and frowned, then said, without managing to keep the anger from his voice, "This does not sound like something Sasuke would do. That jerk wouldn't have to _get_ anyone to obey him! They'd just fall all over themselves to do whatever he wanted!"

This was curious. Sakura had never heard Naruto say anything remotely like this about Sasuke. The other members of Team Kakashi were looking slightly bewildered as well. Even Sai's eyebrows made a tiny crease in his forehead. Tsunade, Sakura thought, was doing a fairly good job of hiding her bemusement at Naruto's ridiculous outburst.

"I suppose you think Sasuke can charm his way into anyone's heart, Naruto? Don't forget, seventeen year old Sasuke is not the same person you grew up with. He is considered a missing-nin who deserted one of the most powerful hidden villages, he is well-known to be very dangerous and his personality alone is enough to turn anybody off. His team, though willing to go along with him, I can imagine demand some sort of compensation for following him. Any leader needs to keep his people happy so that they do not turn against him. Whether visiting the grave is to satisfy one team mate or the whole group, he must go there to keep his future path visible."

Sakura saw Naruto's features darken, but he did not argue his bizarre point further.

Yamato spoke up again. "And there were things like... incense sticks you were able to measure the age of, so that you could predict when he would show up?"

Tsunade nodded tersely. "We were able to date the dead flowers and other offerings to as far back as three years ago. As far as we can tell, they'd been going there every six to eight months, but have increased their visits recently to two times in three months. It seems that one of the rules of visiting the grave is to leave a gift for Kaguya's soul every time."

Yamato nodded and for the first time since Team Kakashi plus Yamato entered her office, Tsunade gave a smile, albeit a small and still slightly displeased one.

"We've re-done the grave and put almost all of the bones back in place exactly as they had been, but we have not replaced the genjustsu covering it. Shizune has notes on how the ANBU genjutsu experts broke the seal, but we do not know how it had been made. It's a little dicey, but Sakura..." Sakura straightened to attention as she felt her team mates' eyes combine with her master's stare of precarious uncertainty. "You've been exceeding my expectations lately in your genjutsu training. Maybe you could try to put together a jutsu similar to Sasuke's. We tried to break it as cleanly as possible so that we could study it later, but all traces of it ended up vanishing in twenty minutes. We'd saved pieces of it inside a scroll five minutes after the ANBU broke through it, so if you attempted to replicate and install the jutsu, you'd only have fifteen minutes to figure out the formula of the thing. Of course, if you don't at least put some sort of genjutsu around the grave, Sasuke is bound to notice and flee, but if you try to copy it and are successful, it can buy you more time to capture him."

Sakura pretended to think this over for ten seconds. She had to look like she had a choice, even if she really didn't. "I understand and I'll try my best, Lady Tsunade."

Tsunade's smile grew a little wider and a little bit more genuine. "Kakashi can help you. He's done this sort of thing before, haven't you, Kakashi?"

Sakura understood Tsunade was giving Kakashi a chance to redeem himself to her before setting out on the mission. "If I'd seen the actual hand signs, it would be much easier, but I think I might be able to break down the jutsu with the Sharingan."

Tsunade's smile shrank the tiniest bit, but her eyes did not look so hard anymore. "All right. Here is your mission scroll. Yes, Naruto, only one, the village is trying to save paper. It's written partly in code, but only the important information. One of the sections contains Sasuke's jutsu. Kakashi, Sakura, don't undo it unless you know you're ready to place the genjutsu on. Sai, there are no cookie codes in the scroll, so don't worry if you haven't memorized that entire code yet."

Sai nodded briefly, eyes flickering to the scroll that was being tucked into Kakashi's pants pocket.

"Good. Everyone, don't disappoint the Leaf Village." Sakura registered Tsunade's thinly veiled threat. She would have to talk to Kakashi, Yamato and Sai about that. Why had they stopped searching, really, for Sasuke? And why hadn't she and Naruto noticed that their team mates weren't putting their all into finding him? Was she losing her edge...?

After they had departed the Hokage's office, Sakura refused Naruto's offer of lunch at Ichiraku's and went straight to Training Ground 5 to practice her genjutsu on the unsuspecting Ino and Tenten.

OVXVXVXVXVXO

_So, how is it this time? Better, worse? I tried to make it longer for you guys. Sissy's not giving me an inch. :) You all be good, now. _


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